Burned area
satellite only1,114ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 2 Mar 2017 – 21 Mar 2017
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
IR · Iran · –
Khoramshahr fire, March 2017 Khoramshahr
Out · last detection 21 Mar 2017, 21:54 UTC
The fire started on 2 March 2017 in Khoramshahr, Iran, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,114 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 15th largest in Khuzestan since 2016 (of 20 with a page). Number 12 in Iran in 2017, of 16.
Use this data
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Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-24matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only20days
2 Mar 2017 to 21 Mar 2017: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 21 Mar 2017, 21:54 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only2 Mar 2017
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 2 Mar 2017
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only166
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 174 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 2 Mar 2017 – 21 Mar 2017
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only408MW
Total radiative power on 5 March 2017; hotspots that day: 21.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 5 Mar 2017
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model46.3FWI · very high
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 6.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 2 Mar 2017, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model31.7°C · 15% RH
High of 31.7 °C and minimum humidity of 15% on 13 March 2017; gusts of 79 km/h on 19 March 2017.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 2 Mar 2017 – 21 Mar 2017
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
What was saved on 24 October 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 1,114 ha
- Dates
- 2 Mar 2017 – 21 Mar 2017
- Name
- Khoramshahr
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/khoramshahr-2017-03?v=2026-10-24A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire khoramshahr-2017-03.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-03-02 | 29 | 173 | 25.6 | 16.9 | 20 | 36.7 | 58.3 | 0 | 46.3 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2017-03-03 | 13 | 227 | 26.4 | 15.8 | 30 | 15.8 | 28.1 | 0 | 24.4 | alto | 1 |
| 2017-03-04 | 4 | 94 | 27.5 | 13.8 | 18 | 13.4 | 23.4 | 0 | 24.7 | alto | 1 |
| 2017-03-05 | 21 | 408 | 27.5 | 16.4 | 18 | 25.5 | 41.4 | 0.1 | 34.3 | alto | 1 |
| 2017-03-06 | 18 | 212 | 24.5 | 13.2 | 24 | 23.6 | 36.7 | 0 | 32.7 | alto | 1 |
| 2017-03-07 | 9 | 56 | 27.3 | 11.2 | 15 | 11.4 | 26.3 | 0 | 26.2 | alto | 1 |
| 2017-03-08 | 5 | 27 | 28.8 | 14.9 | 13 | 15 | 24.1 | 0 | 31.3 | alto | 1 |
| 2017-03-09 | 9 | 354 | 28.2 | 15 | 10 | 23.8 | 41 | 0 | 41.8 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2017-03-10 | 4 | 54 | 30 | 11.7 | 9 | 12 | 20.5 | 0 | 33.6 | alto | 1 |
| 2017-03-11 | 0 | 0 | 24.8 | 19 | 26 | 43.8 | 70.9 | 0.9 | 45.4 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2017-03-12 | 0 | 0 | 30 | 18.5 | 31 | 28.3 | 42.8 | 0 | 33.5 | alto | 1 |
| 2017-03-13 | 9 | 48 | 31.7 | 19.2 | 15 | 47 | 71.6 | 0.4 | 70.9 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2017-03-14 | 9 | 87 | 27.3 | 14.8 | 17 | 24.5 | 40 | 0 | 43.4 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2017-03-15 | 7 | 69 | 27.9 | 13.7 | 17 | 16.6 | 29.5 | 0 | 36.7 | alto | 1 |
| 2017-03-16 | 8 | 62 | 28.8 | 16.2 | 14 | 33.5 | 55.1 | 0 | 55.7 | extremo | 1 |
| 2017-03-17 | 8 | 42 | 26.9 | 15.2 | 13 | 28.2 | 45 | 0 | 50.3 | extremo | 1 |
| 2017-03-18 | 2 | 11 | 30.8 | 13.7 | 8 | 15.5 | 27.7 | 0 | 42.6 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2017-03-19 | 4 | 61 | 25.8 | 19.1 | 29 | 48.6 | 79.2 | 7.5 | 19.9 | moderado | 1 |
| 2017-03-20 | 5 | 18 | 25.8 | 16.5 | 34 | 34.2 | 53.3 | 0 | 28.7 | alto | 1 |
| 2017-03-21 | 2 | 4 | 26.1 | 14.2 | 19 | 16 | 25.9 | 0 | 26.2 | alto | 1 |
| 2017-03-22 | 0 | 0 | 27.5 | 15.4 | 21 | 28.6 | 46.4 | 0 | 37.9 | alto | 0 |
| 2017-03-23 | 0 | 0 | 25.7 | 17.9 | 33 | 47.2 | 73.8 | 0 | 54.5 | extremo | 0 |
| 2017-03-24 | 0 | 0 | 22 | 16.7 | 64 | 21.7 | 45.4 | 16.2 | 0.7 | muy_bajo | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: GWIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 1,114ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 20days
- 2 Mar 2017 – 21 Mar 2017
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 2 Mar
- 2017
- Heat detections
- 166
- in a single hotspot: 174 MW
- Danger at start
- 46
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 112MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
2 Mar21 Mar
21 Mar 2017
How it evolved, day by day
2 Mar
5 Mar
10 Mar
16 Mar
20 Mar
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
32°high
79km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity
It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 16.2 mm on 24 Mar.
This area had burned before
86% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 955 ha in 2016.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Khoramshahr where it started1,120 ha reached on 2 Mar0.6 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2015Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20
Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, satellite-based estimate).
This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.
Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu
The weather day by day
ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
Started with Strong wind: 12 % of the area in Iran
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 Mar | 25.6 °C | 20 % | 58 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 3 Mar | 26.4 °C | 30 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 4 Mar | 27.5 °C | 18 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 5 Mar | 27.5 °C | 18 % | 41 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 34 |
| 6 Mar | 24.5 °C | 24 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 7 Mar | 27.3 °C | 15 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 8 Mar | 28.8 °C | 13 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 9 Mar | 28.2 °C | 10 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 10 Mar | 30.0 °C | 9 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 11 Mar | 24.8 °C | 26 % | 71 km/h | 0.9 mm | Very high 45 |
| 12 Mar | 30.0 °C | 31 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 13 Mar | 31.7 °C | 15 % | 72 km/h | 0.4 mm | Very extreme 71 |
| 14 Mar | 27.3 °C | 17 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 15 Mar | 27.9 °C | 17 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 16 Mar | 28.8 °C | 14 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 17 Mar | 26.9 °C | 13 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 18 Mar | 30.8 °C | 8 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 19 Mar | 25.8 °C | 29 % | 79 km/h | 7.5 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 20 Mar | 25.8 °C | 34 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 21 Mar | 26.1 °C | 19 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 22 Mar after | 27.5 °C | 21 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 23 Mar after | 25.7 °C | 33 % | 74 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 24 Mar after | 22.0 °C | 64 % | 45 km/h | 16.2 mm | Very low 1 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 46.3, a minimum humidity of 20% and 6 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 10.
FWI at the start
46.3
Minimum humidity
20 %
Days without rain
6
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Khoramshahr fire, March 2017
1,114 ha
20 days
FWI 46.3
Min. humidity 20 %
Al-Mejar Al-Kabir fire, April 2023
1,003 ha
2 days
FWI 47.3
Min. humidity 19 %
116 km away, in 2023
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Khoramshahr fire, March 2021
1,685 ha
14 days
FWI 43.7
Min. humidity 16 %
7 km away, in 2021
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Al-Chibayish fire, March 2022
1,369 ha
1 day
FWI 40.6
Min. humidity 18 %
133 km away, in 2022
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Khoramshahr fire, March 2025
1,208 ha
1 day
FWI 49.8
Min. humidity 15 %
10 km away, in 2025
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.9 mm on 4 Mar.
Al-Kahla fire, May 2018
1,797 ha
2 days
FWI 42.3
Min. humidity 13 %
90 km away, in 2018
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 5.1 mm on 9 May.
What happened to them
Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 10. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.
This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it
How it ended
16.2 mmfirst rain
24 Mar3 days after it ended
79km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 21 Mar, and on 24 Mar 16.2 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out.
Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
How a twin is chosen
- Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
- Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
- Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
- Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
- They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 23 Feb 2017
After · 28 Mar 2017
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.
Detections table · 166Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV
Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Khoramshahr fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 March 2017 and 21 March 2017: 20 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,114 hectares (11.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Khoramshahr (1,120 ha, 0.6 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 31.7 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 79 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 71, class Very extreme.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Iran (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.
Where to verify it
A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.
Emergency number: 125 · Emergency number and official warnings
Satellite cross-check
History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version
Does something look wrong on this page?
This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.
Report an error
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 166 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2015, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
Where this data comes from
The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM2 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.